Based on research conducted over a twenty-four month period in Ljubljana, Slovenia, this dissertation provides an ethnographic study of the role of economists in charting Slovenia's transition process. The project argues that economics as a science is not homogeneous across cultures but that its history and implementation are contingent upon the position of its producers. It examines the practices of economists and the roots of their cultural authority which allows them to occupy influential positions beyond the technical confines of a community of specialized knowledge. The chapters trace the relationship between the history of economics as a discipline and the events that led to Slovenia's process of independence. They focus particularly on the emergence of depoliticized economic discourse as a legitimate critical strategy and track the way that this continued neutralization informed Slovenia's broader processes of change. Finally, this study questions the naturalness of the concept of transition presumed by the depoliticization of economic discourse through an analysis of discourses that contest or subvert it.

This thesis contains three essays in which the formation of coalitions affects players' bargaining power in input markets. The first essay considers two independent bilateral monopoly markets. It shows that integrating two players on the same side of these independent bilateral monopoly markets may increase their bargaining power. The exposition focuses on multiple cable system operators, which may have a bargaining advantage over unintegrated cable system operators when negotiating with broadcasters. The second essay extends the bargaining theory developed in the first essay to multiple (interconnected) bilateral negotiations between producers and distributors. Using a bargaining theoretic framework, it studies the effects of integration among local distributors on the incentives for producers' entry. The essay shows that concentration in the distributor industry may increase distributors' bargaining power vis-a-vis producers and thereby reduce incentives for producers to enter the upstream industry. The third essay investigates the effects of coalition formation across two bilateral negotiations in which the downstream players compete with each other on the product market. As an illustrative example, it analyzes the effects of industry unions and employers' associations in a duopolistic industry. Using an "efficient bargaining" model, it shows that industry unions can enforce monopolistic product market outcomes---regardless of whether bargaining is centralized or not. In response to an industry union, firms form an employers' association to increase their bargaining power and this may further reduce welfare.

In this dissertation, structural models that utilize parametric and nonparametric approaches are developed that are used to measure competition and cost efficiency in the US banking industry (1990--96). Competition in loan and deposit markets is studied using the method of conjectural variations (Bresnahan, 1982). The results indicate that market imperfections present are negligible, and that loan and deposit services are competitively priced. Cost efficiency is studied using a stochastic cost frontier in the spirit of Bauer (1990), and cost increases above optimal levels are assigned to technical and allocative inefficiencies. The results indicate that technical inefficiency is the major cause for deviations from the cost frontier and allocative inefficiency is declining during this period.

Currently, a very large scale negotiation on economic integration involving the entire Western Hemisphere, save Cuba, is taking place. The 1994 Summit of the Americas called for the completion of the negotiation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas no later than 2005. Given the ample recognition that investment codification is an essential complement to rules governing trade flows, the eventual incorporation of a comprehensive set of investment rules within the free trade area agreement, seems unavoidable. / The inclusion of such rules within the regional trading system would constitute an extension of the recent practice of incorporating investment norms within integration and trade agreements. Precisely, at the hemispheric level, an interesting array of investment-related instruments exist, and the principles contained in them can be regarded as indicative of countries' positions concerning investment provisions. / Despite a general convergence toward liberalization, differences remain among states' disposition toward investment. Significant advances have been made in the study of actual regimes in order to launch negotiations within the framework of the free trade area. The challenge thus, will be to seek common ground and reach an agreement consistent with the regional trend toward trade liberalization, and to reconcile the interests of the different sub-regions within the continent. This thesis mainly explores the current regulatory framework of foreign investment and affirms the need for comprehensive international integration of rules in this area. Further, it attempts to assess the basis upon which such a wider and deeper agreement could be achieved.

Since there exist drawbacks for linear models such as those based on regression techniques, which have been the basis of traditional statistical forecasting models, neural networks are used in this thesis to train and test the input data. This thesis presents a feedforward backpropagation neural network approach to univariate time series analysis. Real world observations of foreign exchange rates in twenty currencies against U.S. dollars have been applied as a study in this experiment. Feedforward connectionist networks have been designed to model daily exchange rates over the period from January 4, 1999 to October 20, 2000. The values of the root mean square error (RMSE) is used as the criterion of selecting the parameters of the training set, testing set, the numbers of the hidden nodes and epochs, the momentum terms and the learning rates. The models obtained in this study by using this method can be used to forecast the movement of these exchange rates. / Before analyzing neural network techniques, data preprocessing and correlation analysis are presented. It is found there exist three correlation situations: the currencies between member countries in European Economic Community (EEC) have very strong correlation relationship; the correlations between Chinese Renminbi and the other currencies are very weak; and the correlations between the other currencies are variable with the change of the time period. They are related to the different finance policy, economic situation and the other factors of each country with the different time period.

This thesis examines the trade related aspects of transborder data flows (TDF), placing TDF issues within the economic context provided by trade in services and particularly within the scope of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It is based on the premise that TDF are nothing but the rendering of a service product, whether final or intermediate, across national borders. Recognizing that international trade has become increasingly dependent on information exchange systems, the thesis asks whether or not NAFTA provides a solid legal framework to deal with discriminatory regulations, conflicting technical standards and protectionist measures that hamper the flow of information within the North American territory.

Economic integration and foreign direct investment were adopted by developing countries particularly in Africa, as strategies for economic development. For these countries, economic integration became not only a tariff issue, but a strategy for development; hence the term "developmental regionalism". This thesis is a study of the concept of developmental regionalism in West Africa. It concentrates on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which was formed in 1975. / It is argued that as a strategy for development, the ECOWAS integration effort was inadequate because of undue reliance on tariff reductions--- so called "negative integration" measures. It is suggested that to facilitate a more cohesive integration program, countries in the region ought to adopt positive integration measures in the form of common policies on money and payments, industrialization and most significantly, a common policy on investments. / With respect to investment regulation, it is my argument that because liberalization of investment laws at the national level failed to attract the desired flow of foreign investment to the region, ECOWAS Member States ought to harmonize their regulatory framework with a view to ultimately adopting a single legal regime for international investment. / As a framework for analysis, I adopt the criteria of economic efficiency. This is a cost/benefit analysis of the transformations that occur as the result of contractual transactions. Where the costs to the parties exceed or are likely to exceed the benefits of the transaction, it is said to be inefficient. Using these criteria, I argue that in order to inject a level of fairness in investor/host state relations, and to avoid the costs of FDI to host societies exceeding the gains therefrom, international law ought to make binding prescriptions to govern corporate conduct. Based on this reasoning, I suggest a framework for improving the investment climate in West Africa.

In the past decade, the increasing costs incurred as a result of caring for Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients have led to the recognition of AD economic research as an important area of study in most industrialized countries. This thesis contains an overview of the AD economic literature published in recent years, focusing in particular on four cost-effectiveness analyses (CEA's), which employ Markov models to simulate disease progression through different health states. Methodological issues and key study assumptions related to modelling disease progression are identified and critically evaluated. Two of these issues, namely the assumption that transition probabilities are independent of a patient's age and the implications of MMSE (Mini-Mental State Examination) score misclassification, are investigated through re-analysis of MMSE data from two longitudinal cohorts of probable AD patients (N = 106). Simulations are carried out to assess the impact of score misclassification on transition probabilities. / Our findings suggest that younger age may be associated with a higher likelihood of progressing into more advanced stages of AD. Additionally, we conclude that, in the presence of score misclassification, the use of the MMSE in the context of CEA's would lead to underestimating disease progression and the time spent in the more severe stages of AD. Recommendations are made for future research.

<p> I examine the effect of poverty on violent crime in the United States during the years between 2000 and 2012. My analysis contributes to the literature by utilizing state-level poverty rates as the main variable of interest, and directly studying its effect on violent crime rates. I use panel data and a group (state) and time fixed effects estimation method in the study. The results confirm prior research that concludes that poverty does not have a significant effect on violent crime.</p>

<p>Despite vast literature examining causes of terrorism, domestic terrorism has only recently begun to be studied as an entity unto itself. It has long been postulated that a country&rsquo;s wealth influences its domestic terrorism rates but very little research has backed that claim. Preliminary data suggests that there may be important differences between what leads to domestic attacks conducted by terrorist organizations and attacks conducted by people acting alone. The current study hypothesizes that the relationship between a country&rsquo;s wealth, as measured by GDP per capita, and its domestic terrorism rate may be different for lone-wolf terrorism than for group-affiliated terrorism. Results support this hypothesis but not in the expected way; per-capita GDP appears to have a non-linear relationship with lone-wolf terrorism and a linear relationship with group-affiliated terrorism. The data were highly sensitive to changes in model specification so caution must be taken when drawing conclusions based on these findings. Although these results are preliminary, they should encourage future researchers to examine the differences between lone-wolf and group-affiliated domestic terrorism to best understand and prevent both phenomena. </p>